conviction as to mr. glisson and miss watkins is granted and each defendant is released on their own recognizance. [applause] eric s friends and family and the news media are waiting for him outside. and now, for the first time in nearly two decades, eric glisson is about to take his first steps as a free man. eric, what is your emotion right now? this is a major, pivotal point in my life. and i worked hard. i persevered. and with effort and determination i m standing here before you. now, it s his co-defendant cathy watkins turn. also wrongfully convicted. 17 years. almost 18 years. 29 years old when she went
ready, set, go. she was just a week old when he was arrested. don t get too excited. you cheated. and that degree he began working on behind bars? eeric started taking classes again two days after his release. and finally received that long-awaited diploma from mercy college. today, a fully exonerated eric glisson became a businessman, an entrepreneur. but the real joy for eric is reuniting with his daughter cynthia. cell phone towers. ready, set, go. she was just a week old when he was arrested. don t get too excited. you cheated. and that degree he began working on behind bars? eeric started taking classes again two days after his release. and finally received that long-awaited diploma from mercy college. today, a fully exonerated eric glisson became a businessman, an entrepreneur.
stand because she says detectives threatened to arrest her if she refused. they put me in handcuffs to take me, because i refused to go, you know, to court. i was just freaked out you know, because who want to be in handcuffs or in jail or something like that. nobody. in fact, court transcripts show she even attempted suicide as the trial began. but because she didn t testify against eric, her claims all these years later wouldn t help him. to have any chance at having another day in court eric knew he d need powerful evidence. evidence of actual innocence. he started thinking, if he and the other five co-defendants had nothing to do with the two murders, then who did? after more than a decade of trying finally some of eric s requests for documents in his case began trickling in. i came across one document
they got on the horse early on in this case and they rode that horse and they weren t going to change direction. we wanted to speak with miriam tavares. she died of a drug overdose in 2002. other than her testimony, there was no physical evidence, no forensics, no prints, nothing that tied eric or the others to the cab driver s murder. even so, detectives donnelly and aiello went with what they had and closed both murder cases. within three weeks, they arrested their suspects and the bronx district attorney tried them. in all, six people were convicted. we ll call them the bronx six. five men and a woman. all sent away facing 25 to life. one of them was eric glisson. what s it like to hear that verdict read? it s like a shot in the chest. it s like your heart just melts. just dissolves. you actually think that, you know, they read the wrong verdict. that this can t be true.
insisted they were innocent. we met one of them, eric glisson, in sing sing, where from behind bars he d been trying to get answers ever since he was locked up. i ve been fighting these people for years. asking for documents, which they deny me at every turn. they re not going to convict me for something that i didn t do and just expect me to accept it. i m going to fight to the end. i m a fighter. i die on my feet, not on my knees. as the years passed, eric took college courses offered by the prison. he learned about the law and fought his case. how did he get that evidence in his possession? the courts denied all his appeals. i don t have any appeals left. nothing. it was a lonely fight and then in 2006, he met sister joanna chan in one of the prison s programs, the woman he calls grandma. there s particular dark time. he would say, grandma,